Distinguishing consumer products, such as beverages, sports memorabilia, fashion accessories etc., from those of competitors in an attractive and interesting manner increases sales and consumption of the product. The visual appeal of a product may be optimized to appeal to a target market by adding designs on the product or the product container that appeal to the consumers. Furthermore, vendors or service providers often like to personalize their products to advertise the services offered to make the item more fun and entertaining, commemorate a special occasion, or the like. However, while printing on objects during the mass-manufacturing process itself is widely known (e.g., ball skins are printed with patterns or logos prior to the ball being completed and inflated during manufacturing), techniques for individualized printing on objects having curved, non-planar, or non-linear surfaces are generally limited and also very expensive.
For example, current systems for printing on an object having curved, non-planar, or non-linear surfaces require an object holder to hold the object steady while its position and/or orientation is carefully varied with respect to a print head by moving the object holder and/or the print head. Such object holders must be custom designed and made for each object (or for each batch of similar objects) to be printed, requiring additional resources and time which significantly adds to the cost of printing. Moreover, custom designed object holders also take up significant storage space.
These same objects often require some form of packaging for effective transportation, storage and/or disposal purposes. Such packaging must be discarded and/or temporarily removed for printing on the object further adding to cost and effort for printing directly on the object. Furthermore, typically separate printing system and/or steps are required for printing on the packaging material itself both before or after packaging the object, which further adds to the cost and complexity.
This document describes devices and methods that are intended to address issues discussed above and/or other issues.